Ketan.org

The best you can is good enough.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Time In

We have given about 1 timeout between the two kids in about 3 months. We started to feel like it wasn't doing any good, and it was pushing them away. As far as I can tell, behavior without time out >= behavior with timeout.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

This is how cynical I am

There was an article today in the Austin newspaper about drug cartels selling counterfeit DVDs in Mexico. The article is not important; I have just told you everything you need to know about what it contains.

What's more important is why it exists. That article exists because someone from the RIAA or MPAA or one of those Hollywood trade organizations has been pushing newspapers, news shows, and other media outlets to cover this phenomenon. Someone from the Dallas Morning News bit. Then someone from that same lobby went around promoting the forthcoming article to other media outlets to get reprinted. The Austin newspaper obliged.

A few months or a few years from now, when the next ridiculous pro-Hollywood anti-citizen bill gets drawn up in Congress, Chris Dodd or Mitch Bainwol will sit be sitting at a table with their ex-colleagues. They'll bring out this article and others like it. "Senator, the drug cartels are profiting from this. This is just another weapon in the War on Drugs."

Do readers of the newspaper really care about this issue? Nobody cares. This isn't for the readers to read. It exists to create evidence. It exists to serve a political purpose that won't come to fruition for a few years, until the next time the RIAA and MPAA need their Democratic friends to push through another power grab. These people play a long game. As Ars Technica put it:

That's because, no matter how much power and money Congress devotes to intellectual property, rightsholders are back every couple of years for more—as the NET Act, DMCA, Sonny Bono Term Extension Act, PRO-IP Act, and Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) remind us. Each is "essential" — but somehow never quite enough.

Give me some reason to think I'm wrong. It won't change the result, but it'll make me feel slightly better.